A damning report has branded a shock therapy used to treat mental patients in the North East's hospitals as "barbaric".

For more than 40 years electro convulsive therapy (ECT) has been used to treat all types of mental distress including severe depression and mania.

Patients have electric current - sometimes as high as 400 volts - passed through their temples.

Psychiatrists believe the treatment is highly effective and it is estimated that 20,000 people have ECT in the UK every year.

But a report by the mental health charity, Mind, says that many so-called survivors of the treatment have suffered long-term damage such as permanent long or short-term memory loss, headaches, drowsiness and confusion.

Researchers questioned 418 former patients up and down the country and found that 73 per were also not given any information about side effects.

Margaret Pedler, head of policy and development at Mind, said: "We believe people are still not given enough information about side effects."

ECT is carried out at Newcastle General Hospital, North Tyneside Hospital and the Nuffield in Jesmond. The latest figures from the General reveal that from March 1999 to January this year 61 women and 35 men underwent it.

Alan Swann, consultant psychiatrist for the elderly at the hospital where he co-ordinates the administration of ECT, insisted in a previous interview the treatment was safe.

Oliver Swingler, 53, of Shieldfield, Newcastle, underwent ECT more than 30 years after having a mental breakdown. The 53-year-old, was living in Barnet and believes he's been left permanently damaged.

He said: "I was given no choice or information. All I wanted was support, but instead I was tortured."